A Lady's Guide to Fortune-Hunting(20)
‘My lady,’ she began, ‘I must tell you of a most interesting book I was reading this morning. It spoke at length of the fortifying remedy of exercise upon the brain. Lady Amelia tells me you are an able horsewoman, and I am persuaded that a ride might in fact be the cure to your current malady.’
‘Top idea!’ Archie said immediately, before his mother could respond. ‘Mama, let us all ride out tomorrow!’
‘I am not quite sure,’ his mother demurred. ‘You children ride with such energy; I feel quite overcome with fatigue already.’
‘Oh,’ sighed Miss Talbot, eyes downcast. ‘If only I had a mount in the city, I would be quite happy to accompany you, Lady Radcliffe, at a comfortable pace.’
‘Why, you must make use of our stable,’ Lady Amelia piped up, horrified that one should not at all times have a horse at one’s disposal.
‘Yes, quite! In fact, let us all go,’ Archie declared. ‘Make a party of it, ride out to Wimbledon! Tomorrow! Miss Talbot, you can ride Peregrine.’
Kitty let out a dramatic gasp, hand clutching her heart. ‘You should not tease me so,’ she pleaded in mock distress. She turned to Lady Radcliffe. ‘If it would not be an imposition?’ she said, with pretty deference. But it was Lord Radcliffe who answered.
‘Not at all,’ he said smoothly. ‘In fact, I will play escort.’
‘Famous!’ said Archie.
‘Yes … delightful,’ Miss Talbot agreed.
Radcliffe wondered if her teeth were gritted and fought the urge to bare his own.
The chatter of Archie and Amelia took over, as they planned the expedition with some excitement, but little awareness that they had been played as easily as if they were common puppets. Radcliffe had been foolish to consider the matter finished, he could see that now. Quite foolish indeed. The Misses Talbot did not linger for long after that – why would they, Radcliffe thought darkly, now that they had entirely achieved their object in visiting. They exchanged jolly farewells, pretty curtseys and fervent promises to meet early in the morning for their adventure.
It was in a state of introspection that Lord Radcliffe arrived at his London home, only a few streets over – and so it was not an entirely welcome surprise to find his friend, Captain Hinsley, ensconced in his study and availing himself liberally of his most expensive brandy.
‘Well, James?’ he demanded eagerly. ‘Got rid of her yet?’
‘No,’ Radcliffe said regretfully, pouring himself to a glass. ‘She has proven just as stubborn and dangerous as all of my mother’s letters warned – not that Mama remembers any of that now. Miss Talbot has got them all quite wrapped around her finger. Lord only knows what she would do to the family’s good name if I had not returned in time. Luckily, it is little more than a week before the Season starts, and Archie will be nicely distracted by a horde of young women trying to catch his attention. All I have to do is to keep him from proposing to her in the next seven days, for his own good.’
Hinsley looked at him for a moment, and then grinned broadly. ‘Look at you!’ he said, almost proudly. ‘You’re starting to sound like your father, ain’t you?’
Radcliffe looked at him with more than a little disgust. ‘Such things you say to me,’ he said. ‘I most certainly am not.’
‘You are,’ his friend persisted. ‘All this talk of Archie’s own good, the family name. Who’s to say that’s not what the old man was saying about you, before he packed you off to the Continent to take notes for Wellington?’
Radcliffe sent him a cutting look. ‘You know very well that’s not all I did,’ he said.
‘Yes and thank God old Bonaparte did escape, or else you would have been bored to death in Vienna,’ Hinsley said with an irreverent grin.
‘And yet I am not going to banish Archie from the country because I believe him to be over-indulging in alcohol and gambling,’ Lord Radcliffe said, ignoring Hinsley’s comment to return to the original point. ‘I am trying to make sure he doesn’t fall prey to such a person as Miss Talbot.’ He sipped his drink thoughtfully for a moment, then said. ‘You are not totally wrong, however. I may not have agreed with my father on most topics – hell, I spent a lot of my life hating him – but he knew, and I know, that being a part of this family means protecting one another from such vipers. Which is what I mean to do.’
‘You don’t want him marrying a nobody,’ Hinsley said, knowingly.
‘I don’t want him marrying someone that cares not a jot about him,’ Radcliffe corrected. ‘Mark my words, in a month’s time we won’t even remember her name.’
10
Kitty and her sister were already saddled up by the time Lord Radcliffe rode up to Grosvenor Square the next morning, Kitty atop the mare usually reserved for Lady Radcliffe, who – when she could be persuaded to bestir herself – was a surprisingly fine horsewoman. The bay was the most beautiful stepper Kitty had ever seen and polite to a fault, which was all for the better as it had been a while since Kitty had ridden – the loss of Mr Linfield having also taken away the Talbots’ only access to a stable. Lady Radcliffe would not be joining them after all, having come down with a most egregious attack of exhaustion, but neither Kitty nor Radcliffe were surprised or disappointed by this news. Both of them felt the day’s task would be more easily completed without her presence.